Some players (such as Banshee) have an informational page explaining to the user why it can't connect. Filing a bug on rhythmbox to explain why it can't connect would probably be prudent so it doesn't just give you an inexplicable error.

#4 is probably the easiest but wouldn't be allowed to be distributed in the US (and some other places).
–
Oli♦Nov 17 '10 at 1:04

5

#5: stop using Apple products ? Ok, that's hardly a solution to the question, but if Apple doesn't want to let you use their product the way you want, why give them publicity/money/etc ?
–
Little JawaNov 17 '10 at 7:07

1

Little Jawa, that sounds like the best solution!
–
RoddieNov 17 '10 at 10:56

One additional option is to run a separate DAAP streaming server on that computer. It's possible to install and set up mt-daapd (or forked-daapd, but I think that has dependency issues on recent OSXes) and point it at your itunes music library. You would then have 2 streams - the one provided by iTunes and the one provided by mt-daapd - make sure to give them different names so you can tell them apart from your music client.

Sync your files with Amazon Cloud Player. Yes, you might need to buy some gigs of storage, but once you upload them they sync and they are effectively laundered. I haven't use I tunes once I was freed by Linux, I won't ever use I-tunes again! Catch 22 I did it with windows, I don't know if Amazon's cloud player has an app for Ubuntu!